


Eye Know

by remi_wolf



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Bad Ending, Body Horror, Eye Gouging, Eye Trauma, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, i'm serious there's no good ending to this, no betas no editing we die like men, spoilers episode 154, these two idiots will never actually talk and this will be what happens, this is a horror podcast after all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-24 08:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20703200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remi_wolf/pseuds/remi_wolf
Summary: One week, three days, seventeen hours, forty two minutes after Jon last saw Martin in his office, he returns. This time, he returns with a small, oblong box, wooden and stained a red as deep as a wood stain can be, practically the color of slowly-dried blood. It wasn’t anything unusual, not really. It practically invited the eye to slide over it as though nothing was even in his hands in the first place.





	Eye Know

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to 154 on my commute home, started sobbing, and started writing this by the end of my commute home. Really, I just got the thought of the last lines in my head while on the last train, and then decided that I had to just write the whole thing because it needed to be written. Tried a bit of a new style that I thought suited the Archives a bit more.  
So.  
Yeah.  
Have fun, this is typical Magnus Archives. No one's happy in the end, and everyone's either dead or wishes they were dead by the end of it.

One week, three days, seventeen hours, forty two minutes after Jon last saw Martin in his office, he returns. This time, he returns with a small, oblong box, wooden and stained a red as deep as a wood stain can be, practically the color of slowly-dried blood. It wasn’t anything unusual, not really. It practically invited the eye to slide over it as though nothing was even in his hands in the first place.

Martin, however, had his eyes locked upon it, with eyebrows knit together as he chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Jon? What is this?”

“I need you to help me.”

Martin heaved a sigh, his fingertips delicately pinching the bridge of his as they spent a moment in silence, and then two. Whatever was in Jon’s hands started to rattle within the box as his hands trembled in front of his waist.

“I told you that I can’t make this decision with you. I can’t follow you and do this with you,” Martin said, a deep weariness in his voice.

Jon shook his head, walking—no, stumbling, half-stumbling—towards Martin, the box falling open as he caught himself on the edge of the desk. A breathless sort of laugh fell from Jon’s lips as his hands, shaking like the last of autumn’s leaves in January, as he started to pick up the object that had fallen between them.

The black shard, attached to a rod black enough to absorb all of the light from the blue-white LEDs, glinted in the light. Jon’s hands kept stopping and landing an inch to the left, two to the right, six towards Martin, before Martin finally caught them for a moment.

“Explain, Jon. Because you can just leave if you want me to make this decision for you.”

“I want you to do this for me. My hands are shaking, clearly, and I can barely see the knife, let alone hold it. Please, Martin. I know you want to leave this place, and I know that you could help me,” Jon said. His voice had the notes of a broken keen to it, as though he was moments away from breaking into sobs. From the redness in his sclera, the pinpricks of broken capillaries under his eyes, he certainly was close to sobbing, or he had been sobbing hard earlier in the day.

Martin didn’t speak, didn’t break the silence as he picked up the knife and placed it in the box. A quick brush of his thumb against the glinting black blade confirmed it to be obsidian, though what the handle was made of was a mystery. It was cold, leaching the warmth from his hand, even in the brief moment that it took him to set it back into the box.

“I love you, Martin. Please help me.”

The moment that followed was silence stretched into an eternity wrapped around the empty space between two heartbeats.

“You love me?”

Martin’s voice sounded reedy, high and fragile like the tail of a Rupert’s Drop, ready to snap and shatter and explode with the barest hint of pressure.

“Of course.”

Jon’s voice practically snapped back at his assistant, sharper than it had been in months and months, since before Prentiss’s attack on the Archives.

“Of course.”

Martin said it as a sigh, and for a time, the only sound was the gentle breath of the recording tape and the tapping of Martin’s hand on the wood. Jon didn’t seem to be breathing, his shoulders moving more with the trembling of his hands than any human breath.

“Of course I’ll help you, Jon.”

The tension was cut from Jon’s body like the cutting of piano wire, and he slumped into a chair, a stupid uncomfortable one similar to the chairs in elementary schools that caught hair and devoured it without regard for the person it was attached to. Martin walked around the desk, paperwork left with the fountain pen uncapped on top of it, and he settled in front of Jon, pulling a chair of his own in front of him.

“You’re going to have to cut deep, Martin. I don’t want to run the risk of being able to, well, See again. I don’t want to make you do this, but...please. And you can join me. I’m sure I can help you once I’m free,” Jon said, voice softer than a parishioner's confession, though he carefully kept his knees from knocking into Martin’s, hand hovering three, six, two inches above his knee.

“I know what I need to do, Jon. I’m not worried,” Martin murmured, his fingers tapping a pattern on the wood of his desk before he pulled the knife out of the box, looking over the strange design of it. “Where did you even find this?”

“Artifact Storage. Eric Delano was the last person to sign it out, and I didn’t want to look at it too closely. I figured it was safe enough to use.” Jon’s hands finally settled on his own knees as he looked at Martin, eyes flicking back and forth over his features from his hair to his eyes, to his lips, and then back up to his eyes. “He managed to quit the Archives. I expect he used that knife to blind himself.”

“Jesus, Jon.”

“I’m sorry.”

Martin shook his head, obsidian blade carefully balanced between his fingertips. “I’ll call an ambulance once we’ve finished. We still don’t know whether or not this will actually kill you or not,” he said before standing up and leaning close to him.

“I trust you.”

“I Know.”

Jon looked at Martin, looked at the way the man was leaning over him, probably for the first time now that he was sitting and Martin was standing, and he nodded. “I love you, Martin.”

“I love you, Jon.”

Jon took a deep breath, the empty spaces in his rib cage rattling with the dry air of the Archives, and he nodded. “I suppose that’s it, then. Please blind me, Martin. I would do it myself, but I can’t. I’m not making you choose to do this for me.”

Martin just nodded, brushing Jon’s silver-kissed hair out of his face, letting his eyes linger over the other’s. “I hope you’ve seen what you need to,” Martin finally murmured as he tilted Jon’s head back.

“I have.”

With a caress like a kiss, Martin dragged the black blade across Jon’s eyes, starting with the left. Jon was screaming, eyes squeezed shut, but it was no use to hide the knife. Martin’s hands had always been steady. Through cups of tea, burnt pages, recorded statements, his hands never shook.

They remained steady as he dragged the blade deeper into Jon’s left eye, and then deep into Jon’s right eye, inviting the once-Archivist to a life of ignorance and black void.

The entire process took one minute and twenty-six seconds.

There was less blood than there should have been for such a deadly wound.

Martin pulled away from Jon, setting the knife once more into the wooden box, closing the lid over top of it. It was a deeper red now, brighter in color, matching the red tears Jon was crying as he reached out for Martin.

“Where’s the knife? Let me help you, please.”

“I’m sorry, Jon.”

A long pause stretched out, a red thread connecting their hearts for a moment.

“I’m sorry, because I have to protect you. And while I Know that think you think you love me, I Know as well as you that you're just using my emotions against me. So I’m sorry. I’m not joining you. You know how to get out of the Archives. I Know you have the resignation letter in your pocket. Just set it on my desk and leave.”

Jon could only manage to barely reach out into the air as he continued to silently sob with blood for tears. Martin took one step back as Jon reached for him, eyes on his hands and then on the wound that once was Jon’s face, wet trails mirroring Jon’s red ones. Martin took a step to the right, just slightly out of step with the rest of the world, letting the white fog of the Lonely embrace him like a frigid lover.

“Goodbye, I suppose.”


End file.
